Congress' popularity nosediving: Arun Jaitley

BJP leader Arun Jaitley today claimed that Congress's popularity among the electorate was nosediving despite the massive promotion through advertisements worth hundreds of crores spent from the government coffers. "Hundreds of crores were spent from the government coffers for the Bharat Nirman advertisements. The more the adverse reaction of the electorate was visible, the shriller was the campaign of the Congress party," the BJP leader contesting from Amritsar seat, wrote in his poll dairy.

"The conferment of statutory rights to people without backup, financial support and administrative mechanism makes the right fictional. Yet the propaganda about the rights-based approach was so large that Congressmen were the only persons who were buying their propaganda," he said. "Most Congressmen believe that they were born to rule.

Certainly the first family of Congress firmly believes that. They rely on possessory rights on the 'Idea of India' and the 'Heart of India'," he said.

Losing claim over the 'Vote of India' and consoling themselves saying that they represent the 'Heart' and 'Idea' of India is only a self-deception, he said. Questioning the 'Idea of India' propagated by Congress, Jaitley said it was a phrase which was the title of a book written by a leading Indian political scientist, and asserted that in an pluralistic society, every ideological combination, every social group, every economic thinker is entitled to have that 'Idea of India'. "Since Congress has claimed a copyright over the 'Idea of India', it needs to be reminded of what is not the 'Idea of India'," he said. The Nehruvian vision on Jammu and Kashmir and the Himalayan blunder of 1962 were certainly not the 'Ideas of India', Jaitley wrote.

Attacking Congress, he said losing territory to Pakistan and China during the Nehruvian regime, "dictatorship" of Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, superseding the Judges in the name of a judiciary with social philosophy and censoring newspapers, were not his 'Idea of India'. "The 1984 massacre of Sikhs is not my 'Idea of India'.